Residents Prod City to Fix Sewage Problems

David Beckel won't let son Nikolai play in their Chevy Chase back yard because it was contaminated in recent flooding. (By Mark Gong -- The Washington Post)

They stand at the top of their basement stairs and wonder: Will it happen again? Will filth bubble up from the toilet, rise to the top of the bathtub, cover the carpet where their children play? Will they have to deal once more with ruined furniture, brown-soaked walls, that unmistakable stench?

Last month's gigantic rainstorm, a fading memory for many, is a lingering source of unease and anger for a group of Northwest Washington homeowners whose basements flooded with raw sewage. More than two weeks later, they are anxious every time the forecast calls for wet weather.

It is leaky-basement anxiety, magnified a thousand times. And the worst of it, they say, is that the same thing happened two years ago. They want the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, which has commissioned a consultant to investigate and report on the cause of the backup in at least eight homes on Military Road NW, to take responsibility for the mess and guarantee that it will not happen again.

At first, the homeowners worried about lurking germs and bacteria. Now, they are concerned about mold hidden behind baseboards and a lingering musty smell.

"Most important to me is the health concern," Travis Ally told city officials, summoned by D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), who gathered in his living room for a sometimes-testy meeting last week in the Chevy Chase neighborhood. "Seeing that sewage in the basement -- it's where my kids are. We have three kids. The basement is why we bought the house."

The Allys have cleaned up the basement but won't let their children play there yet. Don Fong said his two children are not allowed to go down to their basement yet, either. Olga Deviatkova and David Beckel won't permit their son to play in the back yard because it was covered in contaminated water.

"Should we throw out the sandbox?" Deviatkova asked.

Dr. David A. Rose, a senior deputy director of the D.C. Health Department, reassured the homeowners that the risk of infection or disease is low. He advised them to disinfect tile floors and throw out soaked carpeting and wallboard. He suggested that they wait a couple of weeks before letting children play outdoors in areas that flooded. He mentioned that his parents' home, in Columbia, had been inundated by sewage during the same storm.

That storm was a once-every-200-years event "that literally overwhelmed the system" all over the city, Jerry N. Johnson, general manager of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, told the Military Road neighbors. WASA officials said they received 56 calls about sewage backups across the District from June 24 to 26 and 250 more about flooded basements. Chevy Chase and Bloomingdale were the hardest-hit areas.

In Bloomingdale, in Northeast Washington, 20 to 30 homes flooded or had sewage backups, advisory neighborhood commissioner Robert V. Brannum said. The area has a history of flooding, in part because of its combined storm and sanitary sewers, which cannot handle large rainfalls, and a fix is years away. Brannum said a number of high-level city officials -- including Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) -- toured the area to see the damage. He said residents generally were satisfied with the city's response.

The same was not true in the Chevy Chase neighborhood. Some residents bristled when Johnson called the storm "an act of God" and told them, "We're not at this point assuming any liability."

Travis Ally, who had accused the sewer authority of giving residents the runaround, jumped in. Hurricane Katrina was described that way, too, he said, until it came out that poor design and maintenance of the New Orleans levees had played a role in that city's flooding. How well, he asked Johnson, had WASA maintained its system?

The system is designed to withstand a storm of a severity that hits every 15 years, Johnson replied, not the "extraordinary event" of last month.

Ally, a software designer, said later, "I don't have any confidence" in the city sewer agency. "If they keep saying it's an act of God, there is nothing they have to do."

Johnson said the consultant's report, which will have interviews with neighbors, could be ready in a month. Sewage authority officials plan to run a camera through the pipes to look for blockages.

Some Chevy Chase residents wonder whether new construction in the neighborhood is overwhelming the sewage system, a point also raised in the gentrifying Bloomingdale neighborhood. Johnson promised to look into it.

"We're not hiding any information," he told the neighbors. "We're not burying information under the rug."

"Don't talk about burying things under the rug," replied Margaret Dunkle, who had to rip out carpeting that was contaminated by raw sewage. "I've lost my sense of humor."

Many residents also have lost a sense of security that they once took for granted in their own homes.

Ally said he and his wife, Nubia, have spent $6,000 and will spend an additional $5,000 cleaning their basement and replacing carpet, laundry appliances and other possessions. Their insurance does not cover the loss.

Deviatkova and her husband had just replaced the furniture and carpet they lost when sewage flooded their basement two years ago. They watched with horror as a river of sludge coursed through the basement they had redecorated. "It was destroyed in a matter of hours," she said.

"The worst part," Deviatkova said, "was calling WASA and having them tell me to call a plumber."

They have spent $11,000 cleaning up. Their insurance will pay for the repairs, but that does not tamp down the dread they feel when they hear thunder and pounding raindrops from Washington's regular summer storms.

"Every time, we run downstairs and check," Deviatkova said. "It's such a fear."